Mock the Feast

I wonder if man-eating sharks, or killer crocodiles tell human jokes. If an advanced species on a paleo diet landed on Earth and started eating humans (hopefully the lawyers first,) would they draw cartoons about our struggles, our angst, our enhanced edibility when cooked with Bell seasonings?

Sound cruel? Well, we do it.

I did a search for Turkey toons and got pages of them - especially by the toonist, Mark Anderson. Then there was the memes above that were posted by FB friends. We probably should be ashamed of ourselves as a species.

I’ll feel the shame later. For some reason I feel too sleepy just now.

Should we mock turkeys when they are trying to avoid their fate?

By Trickery

Or By Appeal

Should we mock them as they are coming to terms with their doom?

It's not as though they didn't have troubles beyond our murderous holiday.

They mourn, but they don't react in anger.

Sometimes they even cooperate.

Though they have no objection to a bit of karma payback.

And maybe they dream of turkey revolution.

So that they can live out their lives in peace.

And the video.

Dirk Destroyer Part 8 Chapter 3 Part 2

This is the eighth Friday installment of Dirk Destroyer’s Less Destructive Brother, a novel that is already giving Fridays a bad name. We’ve been introduced to Tip Ton Tease of the Showr Rinn order. Elmer, our largely non-heroic hero has just impressed the socks off of Lip Ton Tease (or would have if the Showr Rinn wore socks,) by reciting a memorized sequence of numbers.

Not exactly action-packed, is it?

And now the balance of Chapter 3.

A master monk, wearing his braid in nine cords approached, riding a mote of dust. “Brother,” said the master, “is all at peace?”

The initiate bowed low, “Master, I am granting admission to Elmer Destroyer and his bird.”

“That is well,” said the master with a face of serenity, and impeccable cleanliness. He produced a loofa from robes and handed it to the initiate. “You might wish to freshen up.”

Lip Ton Tease took the loofa and whispered to his master, “A most formidable man.” The master inclined his head, and Tease stumbled on his way to the showers.

The master gestured for us to follow. His gesture brought the crushed spring flower back to wholeness as we passed.

Then a lamb ate it.

You’d think that somewhere among the Showr Rinn archives would be a record saying that I had memorized the first several digits of Pi. Come to think of it, I’d never seen any Showr Rinn archives, nor had I seen a Showr Rinn use paper. I guess that’s not too surprising. Paper doesn’t mix well with water.

“This way,” said Akwar needlessly as she followed the Showr Rinn master.

The ministry was much like any other lavish government building filled with overpaid, self-important, and unproductive civil servants. Except this one had horns on it.

“They were supposed to be ram’s horns,” Akwar explained, though I have no idea who she was explaining it to. The master, Ono, and Mage-e-not all worked in the building, and I had first seen it a century before any of them were born.

“The building was built just after the last Light Bringer Lauralady Bushinsider retired and transformed herself into a coffee table.”

Even though she was among the most timid Light Bringers, I had a little trouble bringing Lauralady to mind. She spoke so softly and looked around like she expected someone else to take over at any moment. I think Dirk almost felt bad for that particular Light Bringer, but she, like all the Light Bringers before her, somehow managed to send Dirk back into oblivion.

Excessive politeness must have had some mystical powers. She made a fine coffee table of herself, and never complained when people failed to use a coaster.

The door to the ministry was one of those that revolved, and each chamber of the door was too small for a grown ewe or ram to fit. A sizable flock stood outside the door bleating piteously as the door panels smacked the nose of those who tried to enter the building.

If there was one place on the planet where sheep were being bugged, it was here. I’d given up pointing out hypocrisy when it came to the ministry. Like many in government and law enforcement, they believed that rules were things for someone else to do. They had too high a calling to follow their own ideals.

But they had a really nice buffet.

Breakfast was over, but brunch had begun when we arrived. For the fleshtarians, there were various cuts of beef, pork, chicken, turkey, fish, and non-union bureaucrat. For the plantarians, those whose conscience forbade them meat, there was a lovely salad bar, complete with imitation cheese, sour cream, and bacon bits. For the inanimatarians, those whose conscience forbade them from eating anything living, they had a lovely arrangement of chemically sweetened sand.

The nothingtarians, those whose conscience forbade them everything sat near the wall, and tried not to erode anything.

I thought of the Ceasarans starving to death and sat next to one of the nothingtarians. She was a painfully thin woman who wore clothing made out of photons, and an illumined barrier mask to make certain she didn’t consume beings or objects that live in the air.

“I draw all my nutrients out of the ground,” I said.

“Barbarian,” she muttered weakly. “I suppose all those molecules just volunteered to be assimilated into your bloated existence?”

“I didn’t ask,” I said, and pulled a cigar from the bag (there were too many to fit them all in my fanny pack,) and struck one of my few matches to light it up.

“The holocaust!” whimpered the nothingtarian woman.

“Hey,” said a grossly obese man across the table eating fillet of non-union bureaucrat, “smoking is evil.”

“Splish splosh,” said Ono, who plopped down on my other side sending a wave of airborne beings across me and into the photonic mask of the nothingtarian.

Ono took the cigar out of my hand, and put it in her mouth. She levitated the lit match to light the end of the cigar, allowing the match to float away aimlessly after she was done. She drew in the smoke and held it.

“Puff and flutter,” she gasped.

“You get used to it,” I told her.

A weak cry of protest sounded from the nothingtarian’s side. The errant match must have shorted out the photon clothing generator, exposing her featureless body. She shambled out of the room with as much urgency as her captive emaciated physical matter could manage.

“Serves you right, energy enslaver!” said a naked man by the door.

Mage-e-not took her chair. “You’re not eating?” He had a thick pork chop on his plate which he put down on the table.

“I had a big breakfast,” I explained.

Mage-e-not nodded as he cut his pork chop, then his head disappeared as he took his first bite.

“Why are you invisible?” I asked.

“Wait,” said Mage-e-not, “can’t talk with my mouth full,” though he was clearly doing just that. I watched in horrid fascination, for though I could see nothing of Mage-e-not’s head, the bite of pork chop being slowly masticated into pulpy solids and greasy liquids was in plain view.

Mercifully, the man swallowed, and his head reappeared. “Us meat-eaters sometimes get a hard time from the others,” he explained, “especially when we eat pork chops, ‘cause they look like…”

“Lamb chops?”

“Not so loud!” Mage-e-not hissed. “Anyway, if they can’t see me, they can’t give me a hard time.”

“Clever,” I said, and that seemed to please him. I looked away when he took his second bite, and that’s when I first saw, Lustavious Brachenhun.

“Whimper yikes,” Ono whispered beside me. Swampy, who must have been helping himself to the fleshtarian buffet, chose that moment to land – once again without defecation – on Ono’s shoulder. The young woman smiled and caressed Swampy’s hideous head. The bird looked over at me as if to say, ‘why don’t you do this?’ The mixed scent of sardine and bureaucrat wafted from his mouth.

Lustavious Brachenhun pointed his finger straight at Ono, playfully turning on and off its two inch flame. “I think it may be your turn, Babe!” he warbled.

“Groan yelp!” Ono whispered.

Next Friday you can read ALL of chapter Four. But if you do, it’s your own fault. I may write hideous stuff, but I don’t make people read it.

And now, the video

Hall's Sayings for the Seasonally Unmotivated

 The cold weather’s coming back. I’m looking around for a recliner, a dark corner, a bear cave, or someplace where I can hibernate till March (maybe April.) Until I got politically shamed for it, I used to cheer for global warming.

Gray skies, freezing rain, flu viruses that always manage to mutate enough to make the current flu shot worthless…

Never been a cold weather guy.

Last winter, a co-worker with a scratchy throat brought in a bag of Halls cough drops.

“What’s the difference between your expensive cough drops and my cheap ones?” I asked.

“You mean other than the fact that yours are made from chemical waste in Bhopal India?”

“Yeah,” I said, not understanding the Bhopal reference, “other than that.”

“Mine have corny sayings on each wrapper.”

“Really?”

“Really, really!”

Knowing my constant need for material for this blog, I asked her for her used wrappers. I kept them hermetically sealed in an empty bottle of NyQuil knowing that some day I would get desperate enough to post a list of them.

This is that desperate day!

Halls Cough Drops Sayings

Don’t wait to get started

Dust off and get up

Fire up those engines

A pep talk in every drop TM (I love that little trademark emblem)

You can do it and you know it.

Go get it!

Elicit a few “wows” today.

Flex your “can do” muscle.

Get through it.

Seize the day. (I’m pretty sure some Italian said that first. In Italian it came out “carpet dealin’, or something like that. Italians must really be jazzed about floor coverings.)

Take charge and mean it.

Power through!

The show must go on. Or work. (Huh?)

Let’s hear your battle cry. (Once I stop coughing.)

Keep your chin up. (A good way to end up swallowing your phlegm… sorry.)

Be unstoppable.

Turn “can do” into “can did!”

It’s yours for the taking.

March forward! (Yes, March is forward. If March had already happened, I wouldn’t need these stupid cough drops.)

Get back in there champ!

I don’t know about you – but I can’t even get those shrink-wrapped energy shots open during the cold months when I’m healthy; I’m supposed rise and respond to this stuff when I have sore throat?

Anybody see a place I can take a nap?

Now some "Winter" blues aren't so bad at all.

Dirk Destroyer Part 7 Chapter Three and Chapter 3 Part 1

This is the seventh installment in a serialization of my novel, Dirk Destroyer’s Less Destructive Brother. If you don’t understand what’s going on, you could go back to the first posts and read them. I’m not saying that would help so much, though. I wrote the stupid thing and I only understand a sentence here and there.

Chapter Three

The Planet Two

This might be a good time to tell you about the planet Two.

No?

All right, whatever you say.

Chapter 3

Showr Rinn Pi

The Ministry Of Innocent Sheep Toleration headquarters was located just five minute’s walk from where Dirk and I grew up. I always thought that was suspicious, but it never fazed Dirk.

“Paranoia’s no help when they’re out to get you,” he told me.

Well, it keeps my story moving anyway, though I could have used more time to get to know Ono and Mage-e-not before we arrived.

“So,” I said to Ono, “I find telekinesis challenging. It really takes some effort. How is it for you?”

“Oh no,” said Ono, “I don’t swoosh thump telekinesis. I do sparkle whizz magic.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well telekinesis is snarl growl whack. Magic is zip zing kerplunk.”

“I see.”

“I don’t do telekinesis either,” said Mage-e-not.

“I see. So what can you tell me about this Light Bringer?”

Neither wizard said a word at first, then Ono said, “He’s swoosh thwack ugh.”

“He’s pushy,” explained Mage-e-not.

“He’s a man who knows what he wants, and gets it,” said Akwar, who I could have sworn was two paces in front of me, but now was at my shoulder.

“I’ve met some pushy Light Bringers before,” I said.

“Not like Brachenhun,” said Akwar over her shoulder from two paces ahead.

“It’s not that bad,” I said, “you just have to draw the line.”

“I tried drawing the line,” said Mage-e-not, “Brachenhun just blitzed right over it.

Ono blushed. “I usually slither whoosh.”

“That’s probably the best policy,” said Akwar from behind me.

“Be careful now,” said Mage-e-not. “We’re approaching a Showr Rinn monastery.

I’d run across the Showr Rinn many times in the past. When I was much younger, somewhere around three thousand, and Dirk had just been banished to oblivion forever for the first time – before I learned that forever in oblivion was only a couple of centuries, I made the mistake of angering a Showr Rinn initiate. The initiate might have killed me (assuming I’m not immortal,) but instead, I ended up spending six weeks contemplating my navel before I could untie the knots he’d made of my arms and legs.

That was an initiate. I have no idea the mayhem that a master could dish out, and I don’t want to know. I’ve known every Light Bringer there’s ever been on Two, and not a single one of them impressed me as being formidable. I shouldn’t say that; Lenny Bruise could throw an insult like nobodies business, but not even Lenny could stand up to the smallest, spindliest Showr Rinn novice that ever lived.

Not surprisingly, Showr Rinn come from Phasia, and so they are polite, diligent, and very good at math. The can also meditate and fight like a house on fire – assuming a burning house decided to meditate its future and kick ass.

“There’s one!” said Mage-e-not.

“Showr Rinn loves showerin’” said Swampy, and he was right. Whether it had always been so, or that a name has an effect on people, the Showr Rinn were excessively clean, even among the cleaner than normal classification of fighting monks in general.

I could tell this monk was an initiate, not just by his youth, but by the way his braid was woven from three cords. He was sitting on the side of his hand, and his third finger was extended down to rest on the pedal of a spring flower. He wasn’t a small monk, and the petal wasn’t even bent. He opened his eyes and bowed his head, causing a tiny ripple to run through the delicate spring flower.

The four of us bent our heads in return.

“I am called, Lip Ton Tease, said the monk. I know three of you, and I know of the destroyer’s brother, and his swamp-rat bird.”

“Pretty bird,” said Swampy, as if he was a common house mimic.

I bowed my head. “I am called Elmer.”

Lip Ton Tease pressed his thumb and forefingers to the lobes of his ears. I’d always wondered why Showr Rinn made this gesture. Maybe it was to get water to leave the ear canal after so many showers. I never dared ask.

“The Showr Rinn,” said Lip Ton Tease, “are responsible for the security of MOIST. I must ask you some questions, Elmer.”

“I understand.”

“Do you plan violence against the ministry?”

“I do not.”

“Do you recognize the futility of violence?”

I always hated that question. Of course I didn’t recognize the futility of violence. Sometimes you meet some bone-head who just needs a thumping, and nothing else will do, but I knew the answer I had to provide to enter, so I changed his question in my mind to – do you recognize the futility of violence against the Showr Rinn?

“I do,” I said with perfect conviction.

“Will you insult the ministry, or the Showr Rinn?”

“I will not.”

“Will you challenge the ministry, or the Showr Rinn?”

This was a trick question, and it got me the first time as it got most people. The Showr Rinn, in addition to appreciating meditation, non-violent thumping, cleanliness, and balancing on flower pedals, really loved a challenge.

“I will challenge,” I said.

Lip Ton Tease jumped off his flower and rubbed his hands together. “Who will you challenge, the ministry, or the Showr Rinn?”

“I will challenge the Showr Rinn.”

If Lip Ton Tease’s permanently placid monk face could smile, it would be doing so from ear to ear. “In what category will you challenge the Showr Rinn?”

“In meditative mathematics,” I said.

A guttural grunt, not unlike a chortle escaped the monk. “Tell me, are you aware of the number required for finding the area of a circle?”

“I have heard of such a number,” I said.

“The great Jus Fo Fun was once able to meditate on the number and through the power of his meditation, find its value to fifteen places.”

“Truly a challenge,” I said, and I sat on the ground, closed my eyes and folded my hands.

For all the fine skills of the Showr Rinn, originality was not one of them. They had asked me the same question for the last five millennia, and though I know barely enough about mathematics to count the cigars in my fanny pack, I have no problem with memorizing a string of numbers. I hummed lightly for effect and began my recitation.

“Three point one, four, one, five, nine, two, six, five, three, five, eight, nine, seven, nine, three,” I said in a droning voice. I sat up and met the monk’s wide eyes. He stepped back and crushed the spring flower. Beads of sweat broke out on his brow, and he bowed very low to me.

I returned a shallow bow. In a life as long as mine, very few things never get old. Among them is the smell of a fine cigar, and seeing a Showr Rinn monk sweat. At one point I tried to teach Swampy to recite the circle number. Either his tiny rat-bird brain wasn’t capable, or he just wasn’t interested.

We aren’t through with Lip Ton Tease and his Showr Rinn, but I must pause here for reasons that have something to do with lotus blossoms and short attention spans. In the meantime have a nice shower, recreationally calculate PI, and return refreshed next Friday.

I couldn’t find a video of one hand clapping, so…

Mythical Creatures

So recently the drive-time radio talk show host was talking about Big Foot. He asked, (rhetorically, I think because nobody ever calls in,) what mythical creatures do you believe in?

I believe in a mythical creature, but I didn’t call in, not wanting to spoil the tone of desperation that makes local talk radio the medium of choice for sadistic commuters.

“C’mon, give me a call! Do you believe in werewolves, vampires, Loch Ness monster, Sasquatch? Call me because I have seven more minutes to fill before traffic and weather!”

I don’t know about Sasquatch or Big Foot, or even how to tell the difference between them, but there is one creature I heard about once at scout camp, on a particularly dark night when the camp fire was going out.

The honest politician…

Gives you the willies just hearing those words.

The older scout told us of a time when honest politicians roamed in large herds across the east coast, from Maine to Georgia, with two particularly large herds by the Potomac River where Maryland borders Virginia. In order to ward them off, our nation’s leaders built a large dome in our capital. Honest politicians don’t like domes or anything, be it ceiling or argument, without clearly defined pillars of support.

A few years after the Civil War, U.S. Grant, John D. Rockefeller, and P.T. Barnam attempted to eradicate the species entirely, but a few got past General Sherman as he pushed the herd into the sea. The survivors hid among the buffalo, but the railroads hired Pinkertons to hunt them to extinction.

I don’t believe they were all killed, but they haven’t been seen within a gerrymander of D.C. in a hundred and forty years.

If you want to find them, here are a few hints.

1) Look in dark corners. They are sometimes found near town halls during local debates. You can usually tell the honest from the standard politician by his or her bloody nose, black eye, and shredded pocket copy of the Constitution.

2) Listen carefully. Honest politicians don’t have a distinctive call like Big Foot, but often they can be heard humming the tune to I’m Just a Bill on Capitol Hill, and other School House Rock favorites.

3) Sniff the air. Honest politicians might smell like bologna (as lobbyists don’t feast them on steak and lobster,) but the bologna is always fresh as opposed to rotten, or digestively processed – the typical stench of standard politicians.

Doubters of Big Foot point out that nobody ever finds the remains of a dead Big Foot in the woods. Supporters counter that Big Feet eat their own. In a similar fashion, honest politicians are eaten (sometimes after death,) by standard politicians that seek credibility.

“I’m a Joe Schmoe brand candidate! Vote for me if you want another senator like Joe Schmoe!”

Such claims are as close as standard politicians come to campaign honesty. If you are what you eat, and the candidate ate Joe Schmoe…

That, if nothing else, is what keeps me believing in the mythical honest politician. I’ll understand if you don’t agree.

As with all things political, it’s a lot to swallow.

Great vid - not just for mythical creatures

Dirk Destroyer Part 6 Chapter 2 part 2

Though this is the 6^th installment of Dirk Destroyer’s Less Destructive Brother, everything is just getting started. Check back every Friday (or the five previous Fridays,) for other excerpts.

Whatever Ceasaran had been about to say was cut short by three MOIST agents. One of the women who was wearing an official limited edition Moist trench coat shouted, “Hey you!” Ceasaran sighed and closed his window.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned that I’ve been around a long time, and you might think that I had learned a thing or two. Sure, I knew how to levitate a bag of cigars, and draw gold out of the ground, but that didn’t stop me from having the same reaction that every male has had for eternity when a woman yells, “hey, you,.” I looked around at a landscape that included several hundred sheep, a swamprat bird, and myself, and threw up my hands in the universal gesture, ‘who me?’

“Yes, you,” shouted the MOIST agent. “Come here, and try not to bother the sheep.”

I gingerly picked my way through to the edge of the flock, pausing each time one of them wanted to sniff the bag I was holding, my shoes, my crotch, anything that in their stupid minds they thought might have food in it.

“Took you long enough,” grunted the agent as I finally got through. The other female agent – not wearing a limited edition Moist trench coat, probably because she was much prettier than the first, pointed at the bag I was carrying.

“Are those fizzle wisp phew cigars?” she asked.

It was an odd choice of words, but I nodded my head.

“Can I sizzle sniff slurp one?”

As you might expect, telekinesis doesn’t worry me. My brother played every possible telekinetic joke on me before he was banished to oblivion forever the first time, but my brother wasn’t there, so I was a little surprised when the bag lifted out of my hand.

“Don’t be stupid, Ono,” said the first female agent in as abrasive voice as I’ve heard billarian clinbirds use, and that’s as abrasive as a voice can get. My bag jerked high into the air with cigars and matches flying in every direction.

“Whoops whoop yelp,” said the second female agent in an apologetic if not intelligible voice. I summoned what skill I had in gathering the errant cigars before they hit the ground, but most of the matches landed in puddles of sheep urine – a very effective solvent for mercury tipped inflammatories.

“Cigar smoking is a nasty habit, Ono,” said the first agent.

“It bugs the sheep,” said the male agent, who until that moment had been standing silently in the background. He also was not wearing a limited edition MOIST trench coat, but not because he was pretty at all. He was short, dumpy, balding and had on a particularly ugly shirt.

The first agent stared at the male, as if her eyes had the ability to melt rock. Curiously that is not the hyperbole it seems, for I had seen Dirk do just that to a rock that Uriculous Wisehind had been sitting on. For a moment I thought the first agent had such an ability. The face of the male agent disappeared.

He did not fall over however, and when I heard the void above his collar say, “sorry,” I concluded that he probably hadn’t been melted.

“As you can see, brother of the evil Dirk Destroyer,” said the first agent, “you are in the presence of two very powerful wizards, so I would watch my step if I were you.” Her warning would have carried more force if not for an unfortunate coincidence. As she stomped forward to emphasize the word, ‘step,’ her foot landed in… Well, there were several hundred sheep around.

“Boot slop,” said Swampy helpfully.

The second agent- the pretty one - who was apparently named, Ono, smiled at the hideous bird, and Swampy flew over to perch on her shoulder without releasing any form of defecation.

“As I was saying,” said the first agent. “The man who stands before you, destroyer-brother, is the great wizard, Mage-e-not. He has the power to make himself invisible!”

The headless apparition before me straightened, supposedly to assume his full – though not impressive height which was further diminished by his missing head.

“But I can see you, Mage-e-not,” I said.

“You see my clothes!”

I looked over the eighty percent man in front of me. “But I can see your hands too.”

“But you can’t see my head!”

“I have a good idea where it is,” and I flicked a urine-moistened match in the general direction of his nose. The man flinched, but too late as the match bounced off of something.

“Stop that!” demanded the first agent. Mage-e-not’s face reappeared, and he wiped it with the sleeve of his newly urine speckled shirt.

“This young wizard,” said the first agent, gesturing to the other woman agent, “is Onomaterpoeia Upsala.”

“We just call her Ono,” said Mage-e-not, who then disappeared again when the first agent glared at him.

“As Onomaterpoeia has already demonstrated, she is a master wizard of matter displacement.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said to Ono.

“Hoot tickled,” she responded in a friendly fashion.

“Hoot hottie,” said Swampy, who made me think, not for the first time, that he had a better command of human speech than he was letting on.

“My name is Elmer,” I said.

“We know who you are, Elmer Destroyer.”

“Actually, my last name is McFarland, but it’s been so long since anyone’s called me that that I just answer to…”

“Tremble in fear!” bellowed the first agent who had not introduced herself, “for there is one other member of this glorious party – the greatest wizard of them all.”

“A Light Bringer?” I asked.

“THE Light Bringer,” the first agent boomed. “The great and magnificent, Lustavious Brachenhun.”

“Oh,” I said, “where’s he, or she?”

“HE’s back at the ministry,” said Ono. “HE couldn’t come.”

“Yeah,” said Mage-e-not. “He had a date.”

“Will you come with us peaceably,” asked the first agent, “or will our wizards need to bind you with their glorious power?”

“No, I’ll come.”

The first agent stepped forth magnificently except for the squishy sound that her sheep begrimed boot made. The other two hung back a couple paces, and I fell in step with them.

“So what’s with her?” I asked. “Is she some sort of wizard too?”

“Oh no,” said Ono, “She’s just a slap slash whip whirr agent.”

“What’s her name?”

“Youtickubus Akwar.”

“Yeah,” said Mage-e-not, “she’s a real pain, and she shows up everywhere I go.”

And that’s all there is of chapter 2. Only 40 to go (give or take.) The good news is that you’re starting to meet the characters in the story. The bad news is that Youtickubus Akwar is one of them.

Speaking or annoying people…  

Don't Worry; Be Funny

To the best of my knowledge, Bobby McFerrin never did stand-up. That's probably why his music is so relaxing.

We humans demand that the natural cadence and organic happenstance of humor be artificially manufactured in a social arrangement reminiscent of a firing squad.

What did I just say?

We treat our entertainers like convicted felons. We put them under blinding lights; bring in scores of demanding faceless people and then tell the poor saps to be funny.

Go ahead! Make me laugh!

Stand up comedy is conceptually a lot like clowning. Clowns paint their faces to evoke lightness and fun but end up creepy. We figured the clown/creepy thing out decades ago, and the horror industry is still cashing in. When do we start making horror flicks about stand-up?

Pine Street is a quiet road in a typical suburban town. Johnny Belcher's parents have left him alone for the night. Johnny thought he was inviting a few friends for beers and fun, until it all went wrong. You'll laugh till you bleed when you see, Amateur Comedy Night on Pine Street!

Maybe comedy has always had this sadistic underbelly. According to Mel Brooks comedy began with a guy who was eaten by a dinosaur. I trust Brooks' mastery of history even above my teachers in high school.

Invention of the candy gram? Mr. Jones' history class didn't cover that.

After the dinosaur shtick got old, wealthy humor connoisseurs developed the court jester. On the surface the concept seemed civilized, even compassionate. You dress up some schmo in motley. Pick a guy that's too puny to swing a sword. Everybody needs a job, right? The rich noble guy is just being kind.

"Good evening Ladies and Germs!"

But these jesters got pelted by hard and disgusting objects. Have you ever tried to be funny while people are throwing spoiled mutton? Not that the Jesters weren’t grateful when diners threw meat. You’d be grateful for a diversionary portion of sheep’s butt too if a pack of the noble guy's wolf hounds were looking at you like you might be their new chew toy.

One way or the other, the noble guy gets his chuckles.

To reference Mel Brooks again, "When you die at the palace, you DIE at the palace."

So comedy is cruel. Its purpose is to embarrass, degrade, injure, maim or kill people who are just trying to make you happy.

Kind of like dating.

As a matter of fact, the patron saint of comedy, St. Genesius Martinus of Rome is also the patron saint of torture victims! (He's also the p.s. for plumbers. I always thought a lot of plumber’s tools looked sadistic.)

But every night, modern-day jesters line up at open mike nights hoping for their big break. The just want to help people forget their troubles and have a laugh.

Nothing to worry about. Just go with the flow. Pretend the boos, catcalls, and death threats are nothing more cruel than accompanying music - maybe with a lilting Caribbean beat.

Because comedy is the profession of masochists. It's the hopeless pursuit of approval by sadistic masses of ungrateful jerks.

Kind of like parenting teenagers.

Love this song.